2.2 · Wearing the Knots Thin

It cultivates absorption and thins the afflictions.

Word by word

samādhi-bhāvana-arthaḥ

for the sake of cultivating absorption

kleśa-tanū-karaṇa-arthaḥ

for the sake of making the afflictions thin

ca

and

Where it fits

Vyāsa introduces it as completing 2.1: "Now this yoga of action is…" (Woods p. 105). It names two aims. Thinning the afflictions raises the next question, what the afflictions are (2.3). Vyāsa adds that once thinned they can be burned like seeds by meditative insight, which 2.10–2.11 take up.

Reading

Kriyā yoga has two aims: to cultivate absorption and to thin the afflictions. Notice the modest verb. Practice doesn't destroy the afflictions in one blow; it makes them thin, the way a rope going up and down a well wears a groove into the stone curb. The image is borrowed from the poet Vṛnd's Hindi couplet, where it is said of practice. Thinned afflictions still arise, but they hold less, and they are easier to see through.

Vyāsa

“For when the yoga of action is practised with care, it cultivates absorption and wears the afflictions very thin. And once they are thin, it will make them like seeds burned in the fire of meditative insight, no longer able to sprout.”

Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 105.

Practice

Name one habit of reaction: snapping, scrolling, sulking. Don't try to end it today. Make it ten per cent smaller: one breath before you react, one minute less, one word fewer.

A question to sit with

What can you make a little thinner today?

Key ideas

kriyā-yoga (the yoga of action), kleśa (afflictions), samādhi (absorption)